Various technologies exist for recording a message when a user is unwilling or unavailable to answer a phone call including voicemail systems and answering machines. Voicemail is a centralized system for managing telephone messages and conveying voice messages. Voicemail has become a ubiquitous feature on phone systems serving companies, wireless, and residential subscribers. Wireless and residential voicemail systems are used primarily as simple telephone answering systems. With virtually all wireless communication, a voicemail service is employed by users for storing and retrieving calls when the called party is unavailable to take a call, or chooses not to take a call.
In today's electronic and mobile environment, it is common for a user to utilize voicemail as a call-screening mechanism. For example, if the user receives a call while in a meeting and does not want to be disturbed, the user may select a command to send the call directly to voicemail or ignore the call altogether and let the call be directed automatically to voicemail after a number of rings and listen to a saved message later. For another example, when the user does not recognize the incoming calling party's number and does not wish to answer a call from an unknown calling party, the user may send the call directly to voicemail.
As mentioned, traditional answering machines may also provide for recording a message when a user is unwilling or unavailable to answer a phone call. Traditional answering machines may also provide for a call-screening mechanism. For example, the user may listen in on the incoming message as the caller is leaving the message, and optionally answer the call to have a live conversation. As can be appreciated by those skilled in the art, call-screening is a useful tool and is often employed for some of the reasons mentioned above to mention just a few. While the call-screening methods mentioned above are certainly useful for call-screening, current voicemail systems do not allow for real-time control of a call while a voicemail is being created.
It is with respect to these and other considerations that the present invention has been made.